Make meunster cheese

I made my first two wheels of muenster cheese last week. There are many recipes out there. I used the one in the Ricki Carrolls Cheesemaking book. This particular cheese, like brie and camembert, doesn’t require you to press the cheese curds, but to simply ladle them into a mould and let the whey express via gravity. It’s considered a mold-ripened cheese. Muenster is inoculated with Brevibacterium linens (red mold) and the development of this mold contributes to its unique flavor and it also makes it slightly stinky, but not like limburger..

Rather then using my regular 2 and 4 pound moulds, I needed a special mould. They have these cool wood moulds (small, medium and large) but they are very expensive… over $100 and it just wasn’t happening. So, I made some moulds out of food-grade polypropylene. Once I had the moulds, and the special bacteria, I was ready. There’s two ways you can use the red mould. 1. you can add it during the ripening stage with the starter culture. 2. you can mix with water and spray it on the cheese before it heads into aging. I opted for the first, adding during ripening.

Raw cows milk… the best for most cheeses. The curd sets firm, and has a larger yield than store-bought whole milk.

I made the cheese per the recipe I was using, and once done, ladled the curds from the pot with the whey in it to the moulds. You set up the “mould-sandwich” when you use these band-type moulds. That is, a cheese board on the bottom, then a cheese mat, then the mould, then another mat, and finally, another board. (See pics below). After you evenly distribute the curds in to two moulds, you let it sit for 2o minutes or so. Then, you flip the mould, and let the cheese settle back down on the other mat. You do this flipping every 2o minutes so that the cheese doesn’t bind to the mat… and it develops the skin on the outside. Muenster is harder than brie or camembert but the process is just the same. You have to be careful not to tear the skin on the softer cheeses.

After letting the cheese sit overnight in the moulds, I took out in the morning and put them both in the salt brine for 12 hours. After 12 hours, they’ll come out, be patted dry with a paper towel, and then into a 60F/85% environment. I put them in a covered pan, and into my meat curing chamber since it runs a little warmer then my cheese cave.

Gardner, cook, beekeeper, winemaker, musician, lover of outdoors, food connoisseur, husband and father. Jason has been building the 'Morgan Ranch' with his wife Susan since 2001. Each year, there is either an improvement, or an addition to the ranch. The ranch accommodates chickens, rabbits, multiple honeybee apiaries, hunting, gardening, plenty of winemaking and other homesteading activities. He writes about them on allmorgan.com. Jason lives in Indiana with his wife, kids and golden retrievers.